Comments on: What’s wrong with this picture?

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:47:52 +0000

In re “This particular blog only accepts comments from some in crowd,” don’t discount that the comment and even the email are going straight to some spam bucket, especially if you’re linking to any other sites. My blog gets so much spam I have to trust my spam-catcher, and sometimes it’s wrong. I assume if Askimet makes errors on my blog, it makes errors on most WordPress blogs that are using it.

By: walt

walt — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:11:25 +0000

Hi Barbara,

I picked up your quote–or at least I picked up those Gallup figures, and I think it was from you–as part of the 2,000-word piece I wrote about reporting on the AP/Ipsos poll…and recounting my comments when NEA was doing its ashes-and-sackcloth number over the 2002 report.

As for numeracy…don’t get me started.

Thanks for the comment!

By: Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:04:33 +0000

I was mulling over the same thing. There was a figure in a recent threnody about the persistence of the decline of book reviewing by Steve Wasserman: â€œIn 1937, Gallup found that only 29 percent of all adults read books; in 1955, the percentage had sunk to 17 percent. Fifteen years later, in 1970, the club evidently no longer could bear to know, and Gallup stopped asking.â€ Oddly enough, though, people keep asking and the answer is always bad news, no matter how good it is. I'm beginning to think the real problem is not literacy but numeracy.